Lieutenant Colonel, Royal Army Ordnance Corps
Born: March 24th 1907
Died: June 8th 1944
Age at Death: 37
Died at sea, June 8th 1944
Joseph was born in Bristol on 24 March 1907 to Joseph Guest Holman, MC, MBE and his wife Beatrice (née Lane). As an avid fisherman, Holman made a good match in 1929 when he married Frederika, daughter of a fishing fleet owner. They had two children, Lynette and Roger. He qualified as a naval architect before the war, before briefly running a successful garage business and finally joining the family firm of grain merchants.
Despite his pre-war career, Holman opted for the army over the navy during the war, perhaps because his father had fought in that service, earning the MC. He served in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, which kept the army supplied and repaired equipment.
On 8 June 1944, two days after D-Day, the Allied landings in Normandy, his unit, 17 Vehicle Company, was sent to France as part of a small advance force of reconnaissance units. His boat was torpedoed en route, and Holman, by this time a temporary lieutenant-colonel, was lost. He was posthumously mentioned in despatches. However, his family did not know this at the time. Anxious to piece together the exact details of his demise, his mother posted a notice in a newspaper announcing that he was ‘missing at sea’ and declaring: ‘Any information gratefully received.’ Holman is commemorated at the Bayeux Memorial in Normandy.